1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a musical accompaniment system and, more particularly, to a music accompaniment system that adjusts musical parameters in response to individual singers.
2. Description of the Related Art
A music accompaniment apparatus, commonly called a karaoke machine, reproduces a musical score or musical accompaniment of the song. This allows a user, or singer, to "sing" the lyrics of the song to the appropriate music. Typically, both the lyrics and the musical accompaniment are stored in the same medium. For example, FIG. 1 represents a conventional karaoke machine 100 comprising a laser disc player 102, a video signal generator 104, a video display 106, a music accompaniment signal generator 108, a speaker 110, a microphone 112, and a mixer 114. Karaoke machine 100 operates when the user inserts a laser disc 116, which contains a video, or lyric, signal (not shown) and an audio, or accompaniment, signal (not shown), into laser disc player 102. Video signal generator 104 extracts the video signal from laser disc 116 and displays the extracted video signal as the lyrics of the song on video display 106. Accompaniment signal generator 108 extracts the audio signal from laser disc 116 and sends it to mixer 114. Substantially simultaneously, a singer sings the lyrics displayed on video display 104 into microphone 112, which transforms the singing into an electrical singing signal 118 indicative of the singing. Electrical signal 118 is sent to mixer 114. Mixer 114 combines the audio signal and electrical singing signal 118 and outputs a combined acoustic signal 120 to speaker 110, which produces music.
Karaoke machine 100, however, simply produces a faithful reproduction of the stored music accompaniment, including a beat. The beat is defined as the musical time as indicated by regular recurrence of primary accents in the singing or the music accompaniment. This forces the user or singer to coordinate with the fixed or pre-stored parameters of the music accompaniment stored on the laser disc (or some other acceptable medium, such as, for example, a memory of a personal computer). If the singer does not keep pace with the fixed beat, then he will not be synchronous with the musical accompaniment. The singer must, therefore, adjust his beat to accommodate the fixed beat of the stored music. Therefore, it would be desirable to adjust parameters of the stored music to accommodate the singing style of the singer.